In the Americas, historically, the term "Indian" has been most commonly used to refer to the indigenous people of the continents after European colonization in the 15th century. Qualifying terms such as "American Indian" and "East Indian" were and are commonly used to avoid ambiguity. The U.S. government has since coined the term "Native American" to refer to the indigenous peoples of the United States, but terms such as "American Indian" remain popular among both indigenous and non-indigenous populations. Since the 1980s, Indian Americans have been categorized as "Asian Indian" (within the broader subgroup of Asian American) by the United States Census Bureau.[7]

Indian immigration began in the mid-19th century, with more than two thousand Indian Sikhs living in the United States, primarily on the West Coast, by the end of the century.[10] The presence of Indian-Americans also helped develop interest in Eastern religions in the US and would result in its influence on American philosophies such as Transcendentalism. Swami Vivekananda arriving in Chicago at the World's Fair led to the establishment of the Vedanta Society. Many Punjabis migrated to the western US in the 19th and early 20th century followed by many other.

Bhicaji Balsara became the first known Indian-born person to gain naturalized U.S. citizenship. As a Parsi, he was considered a 'pure member of the Persian sect' and therefore a free white person. The judge Emile Henry Lacombe, of the Southern District of New York, only gave Balsara citizenship on the hope that the United States attorney would indeed challenge his decision and appeal it to create “an authoritative interpretation” of the law. The U.S. attorney adhered to Lacombe’s wishes and took the matter to the Circuit Court of Appeals in 1910. The Circuit Court of Appeal agreed that Parsees belong to the white race and were "as distinct from Hindus as are the English who dwell in India”.[11][11] Prior to 1965, Indian immigration to the U.S. was small and isolated, with fewer than fifty thousand Indian immigrants in the country. The Bellingham riots in Bellingham, Washington on September 5, 1907 epitomized the low tolerance in the U.S. for Indians and Sikhs who were called hindoos by locals. While anti-Asian racism was embedded in U.S. politics and culture in the early 20th century, Indians were also racialized for their anticolonialism, with U.S. officials, casting them as a "Hindu" menace, pushing for Western imperial expansion abroad.[12] Although labeled Hindu, the majority of Indians were Sikh.[12] In the 1923 case, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court ruled that Punjabis were not "white persons" and were therefore racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship.[13] The Court also argued that the racial difference between Indians and whites was so great that the "great body of our people" would reject assimilation with Indians.[13]

Percent of population claiming Asian Indian ethnicity by state in 2010

According to the 2010 United States Census,[21] the Asian Indian population in the United States grew from almost 1,678,765 in 2000 (0.6% of U.S. population) to 2,843,391 in 2010 (0.9%
of U.S. population), a growth rate of 69.37%, one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States.[22][23]

While the table above provides a picture of the population of Indian American (alone) and Asian Americans (alone) in some of the metropolitan areas of the US, it is incomplete as it does not include multi-racial Asian Americans. Please note that data for multi-racial Asian Americans has not yet been released by the US Census Bureau.

The United States is host to the second largest Indian diaspora on the planet

In 2006, of the 1,266,264 legal immigrants to the United States, 58,072 were from India. Between 2000 and 2006, 421,006 Indian immigrants were admitted to the U.S., up from 352,278 during the 1990–1999 period.[35] According to the 2000 U.S. census, the overall growth rate for Indians from 1990 to 2000 was 105.87 percent. The average growth rate for the U.S. was 7.6 percent. Indians comprise 16.4 percent of the Asian-American community. In 2000, the Indian-born population in the U.S. was 1.007 million. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 1990 and 2000, the Indian population in the U.S. grew 130% – 10 times the national average of 13%. Indian Americans are the third largest Asian American ethnic group, following Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans.[36][37][38]

A joint Duke University – UC Berkeley study revealed that Indian immigrants have founded more engineering and technology companies from 1995 to 2005 than immigrants from the UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined.[39] The percentage of Silicon Valley startups founded by Indian immigrants has increased from 7% in 1999 to 15.5% in 2006, as reported in the 1999 study by AnnaLee Saxenian[40] and her updated work in 2006 in collaboration with Vivek Wadhawa.[41] Indian Americans are making their way to the top positions of almost every big technology company (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Adobe, Softbank, Cognizant, Sun microsystems, etc.) Many of them came from very humble origins, for example the current google CEO "Sundar Pichai did not have the privilege of watching television or travelling by car during his childhood. Born and raised in a middle class household, Mr. Pichai used to sleep with his brother in the living room of their two-room apartment that barely had any technology. Despite facing these hardships of everyday life in India, Pichai had a gleam in his eyes of sheer ambition and relentless pursuit." [42]

A recent study shows that 23% of Indian business school graduates take a job in United States.[43]

In 2014, the Pew Research Center published an article listing some more interesting facts about Indian Americans.[44]

Indian Americans continuously outpace every other ethnic group socioeconomically per U.S. Census statistics.[45]Thomas Friedman, in his 2005 book The World Is Flat, explains this trend in terms of brain drain, whereby the best and brightest elements in India emigrate to the US in order to seek better financial opportunities.[46] Indians form the second largest group of physicians after non-Hispanic whites (3.9%) as of the 1990 survey, and the percentage of Indian physicians has rose to around 6% in 2005.[47]

According to Pew Research in 2015, 72% of Indian Americans had a bachelor's degree or more.[48] 32% of Indian Americans, aged over 25, had a bachelor's degree and 40% had a postgraduate degree compared to 19% of bachelor's degree attainment and 11% postgraduate degree attainment among the American population in general.[48]

The median household income for Indian immigrants in 2015 was much higher than that of the overall foreign- and native-born populations. Households headed by Indian immigrants had a median income of $101,591, compared to $51,000 and $56,000 for overall immigrant and native-born households, respectively. By far they are the richest and most successful ethnic group in the USA due to their strong work-ethic and focus on education.

Approximately 7 percent of Indian immigrants lived in poverty in 2015, a much lower rate than the foreign-born population overall and the U.S. born (17 percent and 14 percent, respectively).[49]

Hindi radio stations are available in areas with high Indian populations, for example, Easy96.com in the New York City metropolitan area, KLOK 1170 AM IN San Francisco, RBC Radio; Radio Humsafar, Desi Junction in Chicago; Radio Salaam Namaste and FunAsia Radio in Dallas; and Masala Radio, FunAsia Radio, Sangeet Radio, Radio Naya Andaz in Houston and Washington Bangla Radio on Internet from the Washington DC Metro Area. There are also some radio stations broadcasting in Tamil and Telugu within these communities.[50][51] Houston-based Kannada Kaaranji radio focuses on a multitude of programs for children and adults.[52]
In South Florida, Bhawan R. Singh has hosted an Indo-Caribbean/IndianHindustani radio program called Sangeet Mala on WHSR 980 AM on Saturdays. Indians/Indo-Caribbeans in New York City have their own station called WICR.

AVS (Asian Variety Show) and Namaste America are nationally available South Asian programming available free to air and can be watched with a television antenna.

Communities of Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, and Indian Jews have established their religions in the United States. According to 2012 Pew Research Center research, 51% consider themselves Hindu, 18% as Christian (Protestant 11%, Catholic 5%, other Christian 3%), 10% as unaffiliated, 10%
as Muslims, 5% as Sikh, 2% as Jain.[6] However, the Sikhs are vastly understated in this study. Number of Sikhs in the United States in 2010 were generally believed to be in the 250,000 to 500,000 range - which equates to anywhere between 10% and 18% of Americans classified as Asian Indians by the Census Bureau at that time. Among those who identify as unaffiliated are non-practicing members of the above religions.

The first religious center of an Indian religion to be established in the US was a Sikh Gurudwara in Stockton, California in 1912. Today there are many Sikh Gurudwaras, Hindu temples, Christian churches, and Buddhist and Jain temples in all 50 states.

There are nearly 30 million Sikhs around the world today, and a vast majority of them live in the Indian state of Punjab. There is also a robust and flourishing diaspora, with communities large and small all over the globe. Much of the diaspora is concentrated in the commonwealth due to migration within the British empire, yet Sikhs continue to establish themselves in various countries throughout the world.

From the time of their arrival in the late 1800s, Sikh men and women have been making notable contributions to American society.
In 2007, there were estimated to be between 250,000 and 500,000 Sikhs living in the United States, with largest populations living on the East and West Coasts, together with additional populations in Detroit, Chicago, and Austin. The United States also has a number of non-Punjabi converts to Sikhism.
Sikh men are typically identifiable by their unshorn beards and turbans (head coverings), articles of their faith. Many organisations like World Sikh Organisation (WSO), Sikh Riders of America, SikhNet, Sikh Coalition, SALDEF, United Sikhs, National Sikh Campaign continue to educate people about Sikhism. There are many "Gurudwaras" Sikh temples present in all states of USA.

Like the terms "Asian American" or "South Asian American", the term "Indian American" is also an umbrella label applying to a variety of views, values, lifestyles, and appearances. Although Asian-Indian Americans retain a high ethnic identity, they are known to assimilate into American culture while at the same time keeping the culture of their ancestors.[70]

In countries such as the United States, Canada, and until more recently, the United Kingdom, there has been a large influx of Indian immigrants, beginning in the late 1960s. As a result of assimilation, mixed European and Indian backgrounds are becoming more prevalent. The 2001 U.S. Census Bureau's publication of the 56,497,000 married couples, shows that overall the percentage of Indian males married to White females (7.1%) was higher than Indian females marrying with White males (3.7%); whilst for those who were US born the reverse was true with more Indian females marrying with White males (39.1%) than Indian males married to White females (27.3%).[71]

1909: Bhicaji Balsara became the first known Indian-born person to gain naturalised U.S. citizenship. As a Parsi, he was considered a 'pure member of the Persian sect' and therefore a free White person. The judge Emile Henry Lacombe, of the Southern District of New York, only gave Balsara citizenship on the hope that the United States attorney would indeed challenge his decision and appeal it to create “an authoritative interpretation” of the law. The U.S. attorney adhered to Lacombe’s wishes and took the matter to the Circuit Court of Appeals in 1910. The Circuit Court of Appeal agreed that Parsees belong to the White race and were "as distinct from Hindus as are the English who dwell in India”.[11][11]

1913: A.K. Mozumdar became the second Indian-born person to earn U.S. citizenship, having convinced the Spokane district judge that he was "Caucasian" and met the requirements of naturalization law that restricted citizenship to free White persons. In 1923, as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that no person of East Indian origin could become a naturalized American citizen, his citizenship was revoked.

1914: Dhan Gopal Mukerji obtains a graduate degree from Stanford University, studying also at University of California, Berkeley and later goes on to win the Newbery Medal in 1928, and thus becomes the first successful India-born man of letters in the United States, as well as the first popular Indian writer in English.

1917: The Barred Zone Act passes in Congress through two-thirds majority, overriding President Woodrow Wilson's earlier veto. Asians, including Indians, are barred from entering the United States.

1918: Private Raghunath N. Banawalkar is the first(?) Indian-American recruited into the US Army on February 25, 1918 and serves in the Sanitary Detachment of the 305th Infantry Regiment, 77th Division, American Expeditionary Forces in France. Gassed while on active service in October 1918 and subsequently awarded Purple Heart medal.[76]

1922: Yellapragada Subbarao, an Andhraite from Andhra Pradesh in Southern India arrived in Boston on October 26, 1922. He discovered the role of phosphocreatine and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in muscular activity, which earned him an entry into biochemistry textbooks in the 1930s. He obtained his Ph.D the same year, and went on to make other major discoveries; including the synthesis of aminopterin (later developed into methotrexate), the first cancer chemotherapy.

1965: President Lyndon Johnson signs the INS Act of 1965 into law, eliminating per-country immigration quotas and introducing immigration on the basis of professional experience and education. Satinder Mullick is one of the first to immigrate under the new law in November 1965—sponsored by Corning Glass Works.

1968: Hargobind Khorana shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for discovering the mechanisms by which RNA codes for the synthesis of proteins. He was then on faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but later moved to MIT.

1974: Mafat and Tulsi Patel open the first location of Patel Brothers on Devon Avenue in Chicago, one of the first Indian grocery chains in America

1975: Launch of India-West, a leading newspaper covering issues of relevance to the Indian-American community.

1981: Suhas Patil co-founded Cirrus Logic, one of the first fabless semiconductor companies.

1983: Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar won the Nobel Prize for Physics ; Asian Indian Women in America[79] attended the first White House Briefing for Asian American Women. (AAIWA, formed in 1980, is the 1st Indian women's organization in North America.)

1987: President Ronald Reagan appoints Joy Cherian, the first Indian Commissioner of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

2008: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson appoints Neel Kashkari as the Interim U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability.

2008: Raj Chetty appointed as professor of economics at Harvard University the age of 29, one of the youngest ever to receive tenure of professorship in the Department of Economics at Harvard. He is one of the top young economists in the world.

2010: Year marks the most number of candidates of Indian origin, running for political offices in the United States, including candidates such as: Kamala Harris and Ami Bera.

2010: State Representative Nikki Haley is elected Governor of South Carolina, and becomes the first Indian-American woman, and second Indian-American in general to become Governor of an American state.

In previous decades, Indian Americans were also variously classified as White American, the "Hindu race", and "other".[86] Even today, where individual Indian Americans do not racially self-identify, and instead report Muslim, Jewish, and Zoroastrian as their "race" in the "some other race" section without noting their country of origin, they are automatically tallied as white.[87] This may result in the counting of persons such as Indian Muslims, Indian Jews, and Indian Zoroastrians as white, if they solely report their religious heritage without their national origin.

Unlike many countries, India does not allow dual citizenship.[88] Consequently, many Indian citizens residing in U.S., who do not want to lose their Indian nationality, do not apply for American citizenship (ex. Raghuram Rajan[89]).

In the 1980s, a gang known as the Dotbusters specifically targeted Indian Americans in Jersey City, New Jersey with violence and harassment.[90] Studies of racial discrimination, as well as stereotyping and scapegoating of Indian Americans have been conducted in recent years.[91] In particular, racial discrimination against Indian Americans in the workplace has been correlated with Indophobia due to the rise in outsourcing/offshoring, whereby Indian Americans are blamed for US companies offshoring white-collar labor to India.[92][93] According to the offices of the Congressional Caucus on India, many Indian Americans are severely concerned of a backlash, though nothing serious has taken place.[93] Due to various socio-cultural reasons, implicit racial discrimination against Indian Americans largely go unreported by the Indian American community.[91]

Numerous cases of religious stereotyping of American Hindus (mainly of Indian origin) have also been documented.[94]

In 2004, New York Senator Hillary Clinton joked at a fundraising event with South Asians for Nancy Farmer that Mahatma Gandhi owned a gas station in downtown St. Louis, fueling the stereotype that gas stations are owned by Indians and other South Asians. She clarified in the speech later that she was just joking, but still received some criticism for the statement later on for which she apologized again.[98]

On August 11, 2006, Senator George Allen allegedly referred to an opponent's political staffer of Indian ancestry as "macaca" and commenting, "Welcome to America, to the real world of Virginia". Some members of the Indian American community saw Allen's comments, and the backlash that may have contributed to Allen losing his re-election bid, as demonstrative of the power of YouTube in the 21st century.[103]

In 2006, then DelawareSenator and former U.S. Vice PresidentJoe Biden was caught on microphone saying: "In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking."[104]

On February 22, 2017, recent immigrants Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani were shot at a bar in Olathe, Kansas by Adam Purinton, a white American who mistook them for persons of Middle Eastern descent, yelling "get out of my country" and "terrorist". Kuchibhotla died instantly while Madasani was injured, but later recovered.[105]

Indians are among the largest ethnic groups legally immigrating to the United States. The immigration of Indians has taken place in several waves since the first Indian came to the United States in the 1700s. A major wave of immigration to California from the region of Punjab took place in the first decade of the 20th century. Another significant wave followed in the 1950s which mainly included students and professionals. The elimination of immigration quotas in 1965 spurred successively larger waves of immigrants in the late 1970s and early 1980s. With the technology boom of the 1990s, the largest influx of Indians arrived between 1995 and 2000. This latter group has also caused surge in the application for various immigration benefits including applications for green card. This has resulted in long waiting periods for people born in India from receiving these benefits.

In December, 2015, over 30 Indian students seeking admission in two US universities—Silicon Valley University and the Northwestern Polytechnic University—were denied entry by Customs and Border Protection and were deported to India. Conflicting reports suggested that the students were deported because of the controversies surrounding the above-mentioned two universities. However, another report suggested that the students were deported as they had provided conflicting information at the time of their arrival in US to what was mentioned in their visa application. "According to the US Government, the deported persons had presented information to the border patrol agent which was inconsistent with their visa status," read an advisory published by Ministry of External Affairs (India) which was published in the Hindustan Times.[111]

Following the incident, Indian government asked the US government to honour the visas given by its embassies and consulates. In response, the United States embassy advised the students considering studying in the US to seek assistance from Education USA.[111][112]

^ abSeema Sohi (2014). Echoes of Mutiny: Race, Surveillance, and Indian Anticolonialism in North America. Oxford University Press. p. 8. ISBN978-0-19-937625-4. Indians in North America, nearly 90 percent of whom where Sikhs from the state of Punjab, were also racialized through colonial gendered discourses. During the early decades of the twentieth century, US Immigration, Justice, and State Department officials cast Indian anticolonialists as a "Hindoo" menace

^Goans of the North Atlantic. By Clifford Pereira. In Migration, technology, and transculturation: A global Perspective. Edited by Myna German and Padmini Banerjee. Center for International and Global Studies. 2011. Lindenwood University Press. St. Charles MO, USA. ISBN978-0-9846307-4-5

^Shah, Nayan (2011). "Policing Strangers and Borderlands". Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. pp. 74–78. ISBN978-0-520-27087-9.